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Oct 7

Supreme Court Appointments: The Issue of Prior Judicial Experience

During her confirmation hearings, Justice Kagan received relatively few questions about her lack of judicial experience. This contrasts with the appointment of Justice Sumption to the UK Supreme Court, which twice threatened to create a revolt in the Court of Appeal. Why was the experience of both nominees so different, and why was the American legal class willing to accept a judicial novice where their colleagues in the UK had shown such resistance?

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Oct 7

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Immigration, education and Alabama

Alabama’s immigration law and its effect on public school students.

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Oct 6

A Spate of Education Waivers

The Department of Education will grant waivers from the requirements of No Child Left Behind, and the District of Columbia Public Schools has already granted waivers from its new system-wide teacher assessment tool. Both types of waivers have prompted controversy.

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Oct 6

Immigration Court Fails the Most Vulnerable Detainees

Immigrant detainees with disabilities are left to provide their own counsel in court proceedings, leading to unfairly negative outcomes in immigration court.

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Oct 6

Forecast: Chance of sunshine at Guantanamo Bay

The Department of Defense (DoD) last week launched a website to make it easier for journalists and the public to follow the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay. It’s one of several steps, in fact, the DoD is taking to open up Guantanamo. The other major one is a plan to televise the military commissions.

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Oct 5

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FCC v. Fox: The End of Pacifica?

The unregulated Internet, Facebook, and streaming video (including TV shows) can instruct children in the nuances of indecency far faster than watching television could in the 1970s. Ought the FCC seek to censor broadcast media, limiting speech for adults, when there is no real countervailing benefit?

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Oct 5

Politics, Polarization and Trade Adjustment Assistance

In 2006, the Bush administration negotiated three free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. The government estimates that the deals would increase annual exports of American goods by about $12 billion, and may help revive the flagging economy. Congressional Democrats—who insist that their approval be conditioned upon reinstating TAA benefits—predictably blocked these deals for almost five years.

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Oct 4

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Perry v. New Hampshire and the Fallibility of Eyewitness Testimony

When I wrote about this issue seven years ago, expert challenges to eyewitness testimony had just begun appearing in state appellate courts. Those cases have now reached the high courts and on August 24, 2011, the New Jersey Supreme Court handed down State v. Cecilia X. Chen, a pivotal case with national implications. Chen credited the challenges to eyewitness testimony and created a new set of procedural rules for eyewitness identifications. These include hearings even when the state did not participate in the identification.

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Oct 3

Facebook and Phones and Phishing

Unless Facebook mobile users opt out, the social networking site will upload your number and share it with every Friend you have on Facebook. While your initial reaction might be to view this as creepy but ultimately unimportant, the true implications are actually quite dangerous. With your cell phone number, any one of your thousands of Facebook Friends (or anyone who hacks into the account of any one of those thousands of Facebook Friends) can easily hack your phone.

It’s a simple trick of faking caller ID.

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Oct 3

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On the Propriety of the U.S. Assassinating a U.S. Citizen

Make no mistake: there are people out there who don’t like the United States and are certainly plotting against it. It could very well be that al-Awlaki was very high up on the terrorist org-chart. But when it comes to assassinating a U.S. citizen, the burden rests on the government to show that its American target had indeed relinquished U.S. citizenship, within the parameters of some kind of adversarial proceeding. Without this, we’re left with a government that can decide, behind the opaque curtain of state secrets, which of its citizens live and which are blown up by a remote-control drone.

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